I recently did a code review for some work from a team in Ukraine. I was not expecting much - instead, I was blown away. The code was phenomenally well put to

I recently did a code review for some work from a team in Ukraine. I was not expecting much - instead, I was blown away. The code was phenomenally well put together, good tests in place, comments were clear enough - this was tens of thousands of lines of code I'd never seen before and I was able to find my way around - and understand it - within just a few minutes. Not once did I cringe or find anything desperately in need of a rewrite. There were some not great architectural decisions regarding the database which I'd have done differently, but I understood how they got there, even if it was not a good point to be at. This was easily some of the best code I've seen in years, both of my own and other colleagues. There were some key takeaways I got similar to davidjgraph's points. The company here in the US using this team worked directly with this team - there were not multiple agencies in the middle taking their cut. Additionally, it was the same core team (7? 8 people?) working for more than 2 years - they had a long term sense of commitment to the problem and the project, and it showed. Many outsourcing disasters I've seen are rush jobs by people trying to hit billable hours and move to the next project (well, same for onshore workers, really).